Back in July of this year, I took a look at Cubic Odyssey on PC through Steam. It’s a game that I really enjoyed playing a lot. So when they brought it over to the console platforms, I was interested to see how it made the jump from PC. Because of the fact I covered it in-depth for the PC release, I won’t be doing so again in this review. Should that be what you’re looking for, you can head over and read my article for the PC release. In this review, it will be more of a reflection of my experience playing it on the Xbox Series X versus that of the PC version.
Graphically speaking, Cubic Odyssey is a visually stunning game. For a block building game, that may seem kinda strange sounding. But it’s not so much the textures and the landscape, but more in how large the game is. Let me start by saying that Cubic Odyssey is what you would get if you mixed No Man’s Sky and MineCraft together.
The game features roughly 1,000 planets across multiple planetary systems; at least that is the player consensus anyway. There isn’t an official number of planets or planetary systems, and I don’t think we will ever get one. You may be thinking that well 1,000 planets isn’t all that many when compared to No Man’s Sky. While this is true, you have to take into consideration the secondary game I mentioned; Minecraft.
Every planet is made up of thousands of blocks, each one can be mined for resources and used to make weapons, items, base fortifications, and space ships. Each planet that is made of these thousands of blocks is procedurally generated. Yeah, you read that correctly. Each planet is procedurally generated and is unexplored. That’s over 1,000 procedurally generated planets for you to mine, explore, and help flourish. Each planet feels like it’s about double the size of the map you would find in Minecraft. It takes a long time to traverse these planets, even with your ship once you get it.
So while the game isn’t graphically impressive when it comes to textures, it makes up for in the sheer volume of environment you have to explore. Well the game is huge, but how does that translate to performance?
When it comes to performance, Cubic Odyssey does very well on the Xbox Series X. In fact, it plays much better than it does on my PC. Though honestly, I expected this to be the case. Playing on the Xbox Series X, I had zero slow down, the load times were extremely short and had no issues at any point. While playing it on PC, it performed well for me, but it did have some performance issues and crashed on me a time or two.
There isn’t any difference between the PC and console release when it comes to audio, and really controls as well. Cubic Odyssey fully supports the Xbox controller on the PC, so nothing has changed in that regard either. With all of that said, what are my final thoughts on Cubic Odyssey for Xbox? Well the game performs much better on console for me than it does on PC. I love being able to get the achievements on Xbox, definitely a bonus there. This game is Minecraft in space, really that’s what it is. I love the game for this alone, as it’s a ton of fun.
I am really glad I had the opportunity to check this game out on Xbox Series X. If you’re a fan of Minecraft and/or No Man’s Sky, you really should pick up and play this game! It’s a wonderful experience and I can’t recommend it enough!
Disclaimer: A review key was provided
In addition to writing articles, Ryan Byers also creates content for his YouTube channel called "Obscure Games and Consoles", collects video games, and dabbles in video game development.